The Most Basic Human Desire

    The most basic human desire is to "have" another person, to possess the essence of someone else.

    But you can't.

    You can come close sometimes. You can marry someone. You can have a child, which depends on you for everything. You can have a best friend.

    But children grow up and grow apart from you, couples feel more or less connected at different times, and friends don't stay the same forever. People change, and the fleeting feeling of being strongly connected to another person comes and goes. But it rarely stays long.

    One of the most universal feelings is that of unrequited love; a feeling which hinges on seeing someone and desiring the essence of that person. In desiring that person's uniqueness, there is no remedy in finding someone else. Only that one person can fill that desire.

    Sometimes this desire becomes sinister. When it becomes twisted and unhealthy, it turns into jealousy, sexual disorders, obsession and stalking.

    Other times it turns into love.

    Nothing really fulfills it, though. Nothing quenches that thirst, because nothing can. No one can possess someone else, no matter how much you befriend them, bend them to your will, or engage them in relationship.

    But there is still something about "having" someone else, because there is something in the human consciousness that stands in awe, and recoils in fear, from the wholly other. And deep in our psyche, we realize that every other person IS other than "I". Every other person has an experience and a consciousness so different, so multifaceted, that we cannot help but be drawn to it. We cannot help but desire it.

    This is what I perceive as the ultimate aim of human life: to contemplate and reach for the beauty and glorious perplexity of the consciousness that is other than our own.